


Actions Speak Louder

by hermybookworm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1920s AU, Destiel - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, speakeasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 06:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7158584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermybookworm/pseuds/hermybookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1926, and Castiel has wanted to go to a speakeasy for months. Once there, he meets a boy who makes the experience worth all the effort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Actions Speak Louder

The chandeliers dripped with diamonds, their light glinting off flapper dresses. Round tables littered the room, the stems of wine glasses resting between elegant fingers. Music threaded through conversations, twining with words of business with words of lust and hate and sorrow.

Two teenagers sat at the back of the speakeasy, their table hidden just right in the shadows. They spoke quietly, though the music blocked their conversation from the rest of the room, and turned away wine and whiskey offered by girls hardly older than they were.

It had taken Cas five months’ pay and a string of sketchy acquaintances to find his way here, but it was worth it, as he’d known it would be.

He didn’t drink. It didn’t matter. The magic of this place was not in its illicit substances but in its ambience, its reputation, its strange pull to anyone on the outside looking in.

Cas had wanted to enter a speakeasy ever since his brother’s girlfriend had told him about the time she snuck into one, when she donned a skimpy costume and acted like one of the dancers and the men brought her drinks before she could tell them what she wanted. He didn’t care about the alcohol. He cared about the fantastic adventure of it, the impossible stories he’d have forever.

No one ever listened to his stories.

Dean sat across from Cas. He had not paid five months’ wages to get in, nor would he have recommended doing so, had anyone cared to ask him.

His dad owned the place, and his job for tonight was the same as always. Entertain. Not the flashy kind of entertaining, like the girls up on stage singing to the hottest tunes or the waitresses with their long legs and bright smiles, but a different kind. A more subtle kind.

Make sure all the patrons are content, happy, enjoying themselves. Do whatever you have to do. Go however far you need to go. Wring every dollar you possibly can from whoever you possibly can, and never let the smile leave your face.

Usually Dean was up to the task. He was good at it, all charming smiles and flattering words, and he always left an impression. All it took was a fleeting touch, a private wink, an extra glass of wine. Usually.

Tonight Dean had watched as a boy with midnight hair and noon-sky eyes stumbled inside and refused a drink from the club’s most infamously seductive waitress. He had watched as the boy fell into a chair at the back of the room, his bright blue eyes darting from the curtain up front to the lamps on the walls to the couples at the tables and finally, for a moment, to Dean.

And then away again.

And then, impossibly, back to Dean.

Five minutes later had the boys sharing Cas’s table, Dean’s job forgotten. They sipped from glasses of water.

“You do this often?” was in the space between them almost before Dean decided to say it.

Cas choked on his drink. “No. No, first time.”

“First time in a speakeasy or first time drinking water?” Dean chuckled at himself and tossed a napkin Cas’s way. “I’m Dean.”

“Castiel.”

“Interesting name.”

“Everyone calls me Cas, though.”

That was a lie. His parents and classmates called him by his full name. It was only Anna and Gabe and that homeless man living at the bottom of the stairwell that ever used Cas. But this new boy, this Dean, needn’t know he didn’t have any friends. He could be anyone he wanted here. He could have his adventure, his story.

“Cas.” The word sounded different out of Dean’s mouth than it ever had out of Anna’s or Gabe’s. But different didn’t mean bad.

“What are you doing here, Cas?” Dean leaned forward, elbows on the table.

“Wh--what do you mean, what am I doing here?”

“Don’t see guys like you in places like this all that often. Flinching when the music gets loud, dressed like a paper boy, not drinking. You do know this place was built so you can drink, right? I didn’t even know we served water.”

The boys locked eyes again. Cas didn’t look away. Dean never had.

“If I’m so out of place, why haven’t you thrown me out?” These were dangerous waters Cas was getting himself into. Speakeasies were one thing. While technically illegal, they were fun, glamorous, and most importantly, socially acceptable.

“I like the look of you,” Dean replied.

This was far from socially acceptable.

Though Cas’s eyes were beyond captivating, Dean found his own wandering down to the boy’s mouth. Stop, he told himself, but that was less than effective.

The room was thick with smoke and music, but the air between the two boys was full only of a cautious daring, a question so wide it was tangible.

In the end, neither one of them asked, but both of them answered.

Dean’s elbow was dangerously close to Cas’s. All it took was a slip--the table was slick with water from Cas’s glass, anyway--and their arms were touching. Dean’s hand fell from his chin. Cas’s followed suit.

And then, somehow, their fingers were laced together, right in the middle of the table. They were in the back corner of a smoky room, but it was 1926, and this felt incredibly loud.

They stared at each other then, their smiles growing a bigger with the seconds.

Cas slipped off his chair, and Dean from his.

A glance around the room. A glance at each other.

Dean led Cas through a door marked Employees Only, down a hallway, past three doors. A right turn, then a left. They walked past dishwashers scrubbing silverware, past showgirls waiting backstage, past waitresses smoking on break.

They didn’t let go of each other’s hands. This, also, felt very loud.

And then they were alone in an extra storeroom, the door closed, the lights off.

No turning back now.

“Ever done this before?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

They crashed together.

Dean’s hands were in Cas’s hair and Cas’s breath was on Dean’s neck and there were lips pressed together and backs pressed on walls and words pressed on wild thoughts. It was the death of something big and the birth of something bigger.

And then they pulled apart.

Cas wiped away the string of saliva that hung between them, his cheeks red.

Dean started to laugh, his cheeks redder.

“Sorry,” Cas whispered.

Dean stared at him. “The hell are you sorry for?”

And he kissed him without waiting for an answer.


End file.
